Little Purple Book
by Anthiena
Summary: My drabbles, failed fic ideas, et cetera. Now playing: Mikage finally understands... in which Wakaba and the council play a word association game... in which Wakaba realizes her "special" thing.


Little Blue Book  
By: Anthiena  
Disclaimer: Though I have brunette hair and wear glasses, I do not appear to be Ms. Saito... and though I have a bizarre sense of humor, I am most certainly not male and hence am Ikuni.  
Series Note: The above is a backhanded joke referring to the Ikuni Sailor Mars incident, in which he totally got Hino Rei to cosplay herself and it wasn't him. (It was.) This is for all my Utena "scraps"-maybe things that'll be fleshed out later in a story, or maybe not. At least you get to see ideas, eh? If you'd like to expand on one, just PM/review me and tell me what you're planning and I'll be all for it!  
Chapter Note: These are three separate drabbles originally posted at Empty Movement at ohtori (dot) nu. Enjoy them and review! I love constructive criticism. The prompts that spawned them are in parenthesis.

_Drabble 1: Afterimage (any Duellist, lock, key)_

It was so very clear to me in the end. They were fools. _I_ was a fool-no, a _deluded_ fool. Perhaps it's ironic-I, the living calculator misled by illusions. Or perhaps all too fitting. They... the Duellists... mostly saw her as their goal. Their hope for their dreams. I myself saw her position as my goal-for Mamiya.

Perhaps it was too easy for me to accept the replacement. Perhaps the man in front of me was the ends that justified the means. She-and her position-were never the key. The Duellists were. So very simple, a lesser man would scream in frustration. She is not the key.... she is not the goal.

She was the lock. The barrier. I'd known she was the recepticle for a great power, one I wanted not for revolution, but preservation.... but it was already far too late.

It has been too late for fifteen years.... or was it more? "This place doesn't exist..." I murmur as my mind begins to close down.

"...perhaps." He chuckled; "but neither do you."

Drabble 2: You're (Not) Here (Saionji, Kanae, Imaginary friend)

"What does the following remind you of: cherry, laughter and sand?" Read Miki.

Wakaba grinned. "A day at the beach when I had a food fight!" She posed, laughing. "I ended up with cherry sorbet down my shirt!"

"Those things have nothing in common!" Juri scowled.

"That's the point, I think-things that have something in common would always have the same answer, but these don't, so the answers are always different." Touga shrugged.

"Okay: apple, image, memory."

"Kanae." Spoke a man quietly.

The teens seemed to ignore him. "That's a tough one." Saionji spoke slowly. "Sleeping Beauty, perhaps?"

"I think of you." Grinned the red-headed teen.

"Me? Why?" Kyouichi blustered, to which Touga merely laughed.

The man reached for the redhead, only for his hand to grasp air. "No..."

"Last one for today: Friend, thought, childhood." Miki spoke.

"That's easy: Imaginary friend!" Wakaba spoke proudly. Akio tried to reach for the brown-haired girl, to no avail. "Huh, a shiver ran down my spine. Someone must've sneezed on my grave..."

"Isn't it a cat walked over a grave?" Juri asked.

The End of the World began screaming.

_Drabble 3: Friendly Fire (Utena, Anthy, chocolate sauce)_

"Ice cream with chocolate sauce, please." Wakaba ordered and then remembered. "Uh, two please!"

As the vendor filled the order, Wakaba noticed two familiar faces at another vendor, who was selling cheap trinkets-one fair, the other dark. She quickly paid the ice cream lady and began watching the two. They were trying on goofy-looking glasses that only the _gaijin_ tourists bothered with, laughing when the strange little monkey tried on a pair made to look like questioning eyes.

Utena. Anthy. They'd been together since the start of the new school year as friends pretty much. Utena stood as if at the ready, while Anthy's stance was halfway between stiff and relaxed, becoming more at ease with each passing minute. Utena had fought for her.

_Utena had banished him._

Anthy made her friend happy.

_He would _never_ be happy with her!_

The two put back the glasses, walking closely together. Did she even care what Saionji was going through? Did she even bother to find out where he was? No.

_He only wants her..._

A feeling she didn't yet name passed through her as she watched them disappear into the crowd and get jostled-it looked like they'd shared a chaste kiss in the crowd. She turned away from Utena and Anthy. "Nobody knows." She told herself. "I have a secret nobody else shares."

_This makes you special._

"I'm not a part of the crowd anymore..." She murmured and looked down. Her ice cream had melted over her hands, but she laughed. "I'm like Utena..."

She was finally _special._


End file.
